Das Lü-Syndrom

First time visitors to Lüneburg and new residents may notice that a lot of the city’s buildings are crooked. This is due in part to the old salt mining industry that made the city very wealthy in the Middle Ages. Here is more information about this from Erik Meinhardt (pdf, loads kind of slow, pg. 28).

When I first lived in Lüneburg I lived in a WG. Our building was so crooked, that when you chopped vegetables or fruit in the kitchen, you had to hold on to them tightly or put some sort of barrier at the end of the table. If you let go of a tomato or an apple, it would roll off of table, across the floor, out the door and into the hall. Then, if Steffi had her door open, it would roll into her room and clear to the other side of the house. Good thing she didn’t have a door leading to a balcony, otherwise the fruit would probably roll across the street into the park. Apparently, the neighbors in the apartment upstairs had the same problem because we could hear it happening. First we would hear a thud and then the sound of whatever it was that was dropped, rolling across the floor, followed by the sound of feet shuffling as the person chased after it.

While searching on YouTube I found what appears to be a student film with a humorous take on this phenomenon. It is in German, but the sight gags are pretty funny.